Adata has announced that it’s launching a line of “ultra-fast” solid-state drives (SSDs) that don’t utilize PCI Express 4.0.
The new XPG SX8100 will instead use the PCIe 3.0 bus, which will join the ranks of NVMe SSDs.
This might seem like bad news to many Adata fans, but on the whole, the SX8100 drives should be fast enough for most tasks that people need them for, that also means gaming of course.
How fast will the Adata SSD be?
Adata claims that sequential read performance will be up to 3,300 MB/s and write performances will be up to 3,000MB/s.
Adata said that “every component on the SX8100 has passed meticulous screening, testing, and certification.”
According to their own testing, ATTO and CrystalDiskMark will return with the highest sequential read numbers. The latter will offer the best sequential write numbers too.
Interestingly enough, it looks like Adata will have to start competing with its own other models. Their XPG SX8200 Pro drive, which recently added a 2TB model, is only slightly faster on paper. This model is meant to reach 3,500MB/s for reads and 3,000MB/s for writes – not a massive difference for reads and not at all different for writes.
Will this make the SX8100 even worth it when you could get slightly better performance for what we imagine isn’t much more expensive? We will see when we get a better idea of price closer to the time.
What about pricing?
Unfortunately, Adata hasn’t yet released any MSRPs for their drives. All we can do at the moment is to look at the competition and Adata’s other models to give us an idea of what the price will look like.
Current pricing for Samsung’s 970 Evo Plus looks just over $100 (around £80) for 500GB all the way up to $470 (around £376) for 2TB.
Adata’s SX8200 is currently priced around $290 (around £230) for 2TB and $130 (about £104) for 1TB, there’s also a 512GB one priced around $70 (about £56).
What about speed?
The thing to remember is that the best choice of SSD doesn’t entirely rely on the speed. A SATA-based drive should be sufficient.
Luckily there are also many affordable NVMe SSDs on the market. Speed may be slower but with speeds at 2,000MB/s for reads and 1,700MB/s for writes, it should be enough for what you want it for.
When will it become available? It’s not currently clear when we will see the SX8100 hit the market, but we will be watching out for it in the future.
What do you think of the Adata SSDs? Would you rather go for an SX8100 or a slightly better SX8200?